'Out' Early! Ryan Seacrest And Kelly Ripa Pretaped Friday's 'Live' Show
Is it LIVE – or is it "Seacrest 'out' early"?
That's what insiders at Live with Kelly and Ryan are wondering as RadarOnline.com Online has learned that Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest pretaped Friday's show to accommodate her new bicoastal co-host.
On Monday, as RadarOnline.com has reported, Ripa introduced Seacrest as her sidekick after nearly a year of her hosting solo.
And the very week Seacrest became Ripa's co-host on the long-running ABC morning show, producers decided "to pre-tape Friday's show on Thursday," a source exclusively told RadarOnline.com so he could be seen on Live
"Some Fridays will be live on the morning show, but not every one. They clearly want to make sure they don't exhaust Ryan in his new $15 million a year job!"
As RadarOnline.com has reported, a source said Seacrest wasn't Ripa's first choice to be her new co-host.
The source told RadarOnline.com the difficult Ripa "preferred someone less well-known. She wanted someone that she could boss around, and that isn’t Ryan."
According to the source, this week, Seacrest, 42, "put in an exhausting four days on his new job, working for an entire hour from 9-10 a.m. each day! Then they also pretaped Friday's show on Thursday and he and Kelly took Friday off!"
The source also noted that "the rest of the Live staff members work Friday even when the hosts do not. Producers are earning $75,000 a year and have much longer hours. But they still manage to put in five days a week."
ABC shocked America when it chose former American Idol host and Keeping Up with the Kardashians producer Seacrest for the vacant job opposite Ripa.
As RadarOnline.com readers know, Ripa, 46, felt blindsided when Michael Strahan left his job as her co-host to go to Good Morning America. Former NFL star Strahan's last Live show was in May 2016.
- Insane Methods Stars Used to Kick Smoking: Including Pills, Pigging Out, Meditating and Hypnosis
- What A-Listers Really Saw and Knew About Sean 'Diddy' Combs' Twisted 'Freak Offs' — From 50 Cent to Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres
- 14 Celebrity Couples Who Secretly Eloped: From Malcolm McRae and Anya Taylor-Joy to Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis
DAILY. BREAKING. CELEBRITY NEWS. ALL FREE.
Now, insiders say Ripa has been betrayed again as ABC bigwigs' hiring of Seacrest was because they had decided to bring American Idol to the network. (It previously aired on FOX).
Speculation is running rampant that ABC will officially announce it has acquired Idol at its upfront advertising event. It's speculated the rebooted show will air on Sunday nights, possibly beginning next March.
That would be the perfect schedule for Seacrest to host Idol on Sundays in Los Angeles, then take a red eye flight to New York to co-host Live with Ripa Monday morning--and chat about the reality show.
Seacrest hasn't commented on the new Idol possibilities, but the Los Angeles radio show host did say about Live, "It was easy for me to say I wanted to work with Kelly, but the complicated part was that I have a job – and jobs – on the West Coast. And this show is obviously live from the East Coast every day. So we had to figure out if this would really work. What are the logistics? That was really the big issue.
"We had a conversation about shooting in Los Angeles. It didn’t last long," Seacrest said.
"I’ll be going back and forth, and doing everything that I have to do,” Seacrest said. “I have a home back in L.A. and my dog is there."
But now, as sources have told RadarOnline.com, it seems to all be about accommodating Seacrest—and the new American Idol!
We pay for juicy info! Do you have a story for RadarOnline.com? Email us at tips@radaronline.com, or call us at 800-344-9598 any time, day or night.